Those who follow the development of Sten Larsson's TetattDS (previous article here) would be delighted to know that the homebrewed Tetris Attack is now beefed up with new features, such as local and Wi-fi play. Can things get any better for this piece of homebrew heaven? More details in the full article.

Download: TetattDS v3.0

After more than a year in hiatus, developer Steve Larsson (Stonebone) has finally come up with an update for the portable sound library application libmikmod with version 2.3.0ds1. This unofficial DS port based on the ModMik app now has an update based on the latest library and includes many hardware mixes fixes by Andreas Back. For more information, check out the full article!

Download: libmikmod 3.2.0ds1
Download: libmikmod 3.2.0ds1 (source)

Sten Larsson has released libmikmod 3.1.11ds1, which is an unofficial DS port of libmikmod. libmikmod is the library used by MikMod, a portable module player that supports various formats such as MOD, S3M, IT, and XM.

There are two drivers provided: one software mixer and one hardware mixer. The software driver can use a lot of CPU power depending on the module played. The hardware driver should use less CPU resources but is currently incomplete and has a lot of bugs, limiting it to playing simple modules correctly.

The software driver does all mixing on ARM9 and uses only sound channel 0. Unfortunately, it uses TIMER0 and TIMER1 on ARM7 for timing. The hardware driver uses sound channels 0 to x-1, where x is the number of channels in the module. When using the hardware driver you need to call the tick function every md_bpm*0.4 seconds.

Both the hardware and software driver needs to send messages from ARM9 to ARM7. The communication itself needs to be done in the application. All messages will be 32-bit and always >= (1<<28). This makes it easier to distinguish them from your own messages.

If all that sounds like some kind of language picked up by SETI beaming down on Earth from a remote corner of the universe, we suggest you read the readme file. Actually, you have to read the file because it contains a link to the official online manual on using libmikmod. It's a required reading if you want to get into this DS homebrew app.

Download: [libmikmod 3.1.11ds1]

Sten Larsson's TetAttDS homebrew is now updated to v1.2. The #4 NDS/GBA title in Neoflash's Summer Coding tilt is all about lining up same-color blocks to blast them out of the way, just like its inspiration Tetris Attack. Now, it's only been a month since v1.1 was released, but if you've been playing this game on Wi-Fi, then you'll be delighted to know that 1.2 features fixes in some crashes you might have encountered.

And the other things that have been improved in 1.2 are:

• Players return to menu after dying in 3+ player games so they can chat and quit.
• A new server gui written in C++/CLI (needs .NET Framework 2.0)
• Close button added to keyboard dialog and others

Thanks for sending this in, badam!

Download: [TetAttDS v1.2]

Sten Larsson has just released v1.1 of his game TetAttDS, which is based on the game Tetris Attack by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.

It's a game that relies heavily on a stylus. The goal is to line up three or more blocks of the same kind to make them pop, and this can be done by dragging a block either to the left or the right. A combo is done when more than three blocks are lined up, and a chain occurs when the pieces that fell because of a previous move line up as well. The game ends when a piece reaches the top of the screen.

Having smooth graphics and controls, this game also has three modes which are Endless (the equivalent of survival mode where you just keep going until you run out of moves), VS Self, and WiFi Play where you can play with three other people. In Wifi Play, whenever you perform a chain or combo "garbage" is dropped on one of your opponent's stack, which can only be removed if blocks directly touching it are popped.

The updated version reflects the following changes:

• Implemented a new udp based network protocol. This fixes the crashing issues and is also faster
• Default server address is now ted.getmyip.com instead of nothing
• Fixed chat-parsing, correctly finds where to break up lines
• Added menu background
• New colors in the menus
• Prevent sending empty chat messages
• Typing notification
• Made Start function as Enter in the text dialogs

Download: [TetAttDS v1.1]